I had heard of another variety of wildcat, seen at rare intervals in the same districts.  The habitant is rather foggy on the subject of zoology in general, and my attempts to obtain a satisfactory description of this animal were futile.  Some of the definitions of this rare chat-sauvage, indeed, might have answered for specifications of a griffin, or of a vampire-bat.  At last, one day, when walking about in the market-place at Quebec, I saw a crowd assembled round a gray-clad countryman, who presided over a small box on which the words Chat-Sauvage were painted.  Now was my time to set the question at rest.  I invested sixpence in the show.  When a good number of sixpences had been paid in, the proprietor opened his box, out from which crawled a fat, familiar raccoon, apparently as much at home in the market-place as he could have been in the middle of his native swamp.  And this was the mysterious “wild-cat” about which I had asked so many questions and heard so many stories!

It is noticeable that thunder-storms, travelling from the westward toward Quebec, usually diverge across the valley of the St. Charles in the direction of Lorette, and coast along the ridge of ground on which that place is situated to Charlesbourg, a small village lying about four miles to the east of it, upon the ridge.  There the storms appear to culminate, pouring out the full vials of their wrath upon the devoted habitans of white-cotted Charlesbourg.  The wayfarer who wends through this rustical district will hardly fail to observe the prevailing taste for lightning-rods.  The smallest cottage has at least two of these fire-irons, one upon each gable; houses of more pretensions are provided with an indefinite number; and the big white church has its purple roof so bristled with them, that the pause which a flash of lightning must necessarily make before deciding by which of them to come down must enable any tolerably active person to get out of the way in good time.  And yet, with all these defenders of the faithful, I remember how the steeple was taken clean off the big white church, in splinters, one wild night after I had watched a long array of cloud-chariots rolling heavily away eastward along the ridge:  also, how a farmer’s handsome daughter, the belle of the village, sat upright and dead upon a sofa when people came again to their eyesight after a blinding flash.  So much for lightning-rods!—­so much for the mystic iron!

When the day of the Fete Dieu comes round, Quebec and its neighboring villages are all alive for the celebration of the fete, which takes place on the following Sunday.  Then the great suburb of St. Roch is a sight to see.  Every street of it is converted into a green alley, embowered with young pine-trees, and flaunting with banners temporarily constructed out of all available pieces of dry-goods, lent by the devoted shop-keepers of the olden Church.  Most extraordinary lithographs of holy personages